Installing Deck Footings

For our cabin, we decided to build a fairly large deck so that
we'd have plenty of room to enjoy the view of the lake. In
total we had about 1000 sq ft of deck to construct. The front
deck was built 12 ft wide and the covered side deck was 10 ft wide.
We decided to go with Trex for the durability and long-term
maintenance. The first step however was installing the deck footings.

We hired a backhoe to come dig our deck footings.
Top of footings needed to be 24" below the final grade for frost
protection. Make sure you're careful around those utility
lines..especially the electrical conduit because it's not very deep.
You'll notice we had already constructed the floor of the deck and
temporarily supported it with 2x4s. The neighbors were worried
this was permanent and quickly came over to see if we were really
going to support our deck like that. The floor of the deck was
framed with hangers and 2x8s. We used some Glu-Lams for the
front part of the deck where we had to span further across the
garage areas.

Whoops....forgot about that damn foundation drain pipe!

The next step to installing the deck footings is
the concrete forms.
We formed the footings out of 2x8s and sonotubes. Rebar was
installed in the base of the footing and a couple lengths were
inserted in the cylindrical portion when we poured the concrete in.

Footings for the side deck.

We poured all the sonotubes full and had some extra concrete to dump
in the base of a few of them.

Once the concrete started to setup, we smoothed the footings off and
inserted a bolt that would hold the future posts on the footing. The
link below takes you to the installation of our trex deck.
That concludes the installation of our deck footings.